1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the improvement of a LAN (local area network) controller.
2. Description of the Related Art
In conventional Practice, LANs are constituted by the fact that one microprocessor is connected to a network via one LAN controller. Regarding the communication between the microprocessor and the network, data such as an identifier relating to data identification which is received/transmitted by the microprocessor, and data allowing the communication, are sequentially transmitted from the microprocessor to a LAN controller. Then, the communication between the microprocessor and the network were able to be performed after these data were stored into a memory device of the LAN controller.
However, to start the communication between the microprocessor and the network, it was necessary to store a necessary initialization, that is, data such as an identifier and data allowing data communication, into the memory device, so that the load on the microprocessor was increased.
Moreover, the conventional LAN controllers output data, which was input from the network, to the microprocessor as it was. In other words, identifiers such as a node address existing after or before data, a name of data, and bit for error check were added on the network. However, data itself was neither converted nor arithmetically operated on the network. In other words, data was converted and arithmetically operated only by the microprocessor, and the load on the microprocessor was further increased.